Intrigue In Milan

By MANDRUZZATO GIOVANNI

Milan in 1816. Police inspector Marco Ziani, newly transferred from Trieste, investigates an apparent suicide that leads him to uncover the schemes of a diabolical international conspiracy against the backdrop of a city in the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeat and the return of Austrian rule. His frequent visits to the main suspect, a rich and mysterious Hungarian countess, will change the course of his inquiry and of his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tektime
• Release date: Apr 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9788835450764

Book preview

CHAPTER I

Milan, 16 October 1816, 11.30 p.m.

Via Molino delle Armi

Four men wrapped in their loose black cloaks moved in stealth along Molino delle Armi street as the rain lashed down no end.

Walking the length of the canal, they went beyond the old mill used to forge weapons when the Signoria used to rule the city.

This building, as with others built more recently, was being used by the Austrians to grind wheat meant for the civic guard.

The group of four reached the Piazza della Vetra, with the right turret of the San Lorenzo Basilica and townhouses containing it.

They found the square deserted, as if it were just the place for tortures to be meted out before, or instead of, an execution during the Middle Ages.

Local legend of witches’ and heretics’ spirits creeping without relent through stormy nights was sufficient to guarantee they went unobserved by all.

They crossed the square cornerwise and swept through a passage by the Vepra canal that flowed into the Olona.  A few steps down, they entered a precarious, unguarded mill.  With his lantern lit, one of the men led them to a warehouse full of breadbaskets with enough to feed a regiment.

The lantern holder turned to his companion, a tall and portly gentleman dressed in a green trench coat.

‘See here the great godsend we have, Kramer!’ the smuggler cried out.  He was a short, lean man, the so-called Sfrosador.

‘Where did all this stuff come from?’

‘Never you mind.  Are you still prepared to buy at the price arranged?’

‘Of course, but how am I to take it away?’ asked the man, speaking in a strong German accent.

Sfrosador thrice heard a knock at the door before a brief silence and two more.

‘My lads are here already;’ he answered as he rubbed his hands in glee at the success of this venture, ‘they’ll take care of loading up the wares and then onto the black market’.

‘But are you sure that everything will be in order?’ asked Kramer.

‘With Gino Tagliabue ─ Sfrosador to you ─ all business runs as oil,’ answered the companion as he opened the door.

A square blow to the nose powerful enough to knock him cold amongst the breadbaskets belied these last words.

Before the others could react, the man who had landed the punch shot a second smuggler’s knee through with precision and a pistol.  The third lunged at the assailant with the knife, but the back of his skull was then caved in with a single sharp blow from a shovel leaning against the wall.  As the afflicted rogue fell to the ground as a clean-felled tree, the last one standing made good his escape, sweeping towards Piazza della Vetra.  The assailant, a tall man dressed in a dark green raincoat, turned to a man in a white Austrian soldiers’ uniform who had just rushed to the head of the patrol.

‘Paolo, your pistol!’

The weapon seized, the man shot the fugitive in the thigh just a moment before he fell out of range.

He saw the man fall onto the pavement after a colourful turn of German phrase.

With a satisfied grin, he looked him up and down.

‘So, Günther, since when did you decide to open a bakery?’

‘Ziani, is that you?  Scheiße, you’re a curse unto me!’

‘Alas for you, I was seconded to Milan some months ago’.

‘Do you know this man, Marco?’ said the man in sergeant’s uniform.

‘I present to you Herr Günther Kramer, former spy and deserter, now become the former worst smuggler in the Empire,’ Ziani answered sergeant Paolo Sangalli.

‘Brazen of face and lies as quick as his feet, if I may be so bold.  Is he the worst in that he’s infamous?’

‘By that I mean he’s incapable, from when he was selling unsound armaments to Serbian renegades in Sarajevo; isn’t that right, Günther?’

‘I’m bleeding to death.  Do something instead of making mock, you bastard!’

‘It would be a pleasure to kill you, you worm, but I shall leave you at the mercy of the patrol who’ll take you to Cà Granda and then to the clink.  Speaking of which, given your facility to escape from the gaols here, you’ve earnt yourself a nice sojourn at Spielberg in Bohemia.  Hats off to you!’

‘Fick dich, deine Mutter!’ exclaimed the German as he covered the wound with his bare hands.  Ziani turned away from him as Sangalli set his sights on the soldiers of the patrol.

‘You three there ─ to the mill!  Sfrosador is there with two others, roughed up!  You two, however, deal with this man.  Stanch the bleed!’

‘Such wasted effort!’ ventured Ziani as he drank liquor from a hipflask.

‘Could you not have waited for us as agreed before breaking the mill in, Marco?  With your methods of policing, you’ve brought four of them to the infirmary!’

‘You’re to blame, the one to ask me not to kill anybody!’ answered Ziani.

Then, dignifying neither the sergeant nor the patrolmen with a look their way, he moved away, throwing the now-spent flask into the canal.

CHAPTER II

Port of Trieste, 1815 (a year and a half earlier)

The cold Alpine wind blew north-easterly over the port of Trieste, cutting through like a straight razor.

The wharves were deserted and the fishing boats were all moored for the sea’s treachery.

Between the shacks of the old port, used to move and store wares from their arrival until their conveyance and circulation, a man dressed in a weighty green trench coat had been waiting patiently for hours.

A hunter’s cap with crêpe rubber ears and a heavy scarf covered almost of all of the man’s face, looking fixedly at the hangar-like construction with a platform raised by about a metre, used for loading and unloading wares.

A small carriage pulled by two people in mariners’ garb finally left the warehouse to stop at the wharf not far away.

Not making the slightest bit of noise, Ziani approached the carriage, sheltering behind many empty chests piled against the side of the warehouse.  From that spot, he could make out the two mariners wishing to speak with two men; the first could not be identified, with his face hooded and the second was a Slovene miscreant with distinguishing marks known to the Trieste constabulary.

Before Ziani could hear the debate, the Slovenian stabbed one of the two mariners to death.  The other did nothing in the least to defend himself or to flee.

‘Police!  Hands to the air and away from the cart,’ Ziani cried out, coming out into the light.

The two miscreants, at first pretending to obey, accosted the policeman with their fists, signing their own death warrants in that moment.

The pistols, now bereft of shot, were disposed of and Ziani approached the hooded man, silent and as still as a statue.  As he was to take the hood off, he was dealt a blow to his nape and his legs suddenly gave way.  His eyes saw only darkness and the mind was willing, but his brawn would not comply.  All but lifeless on the port’s wharf, he could only hear two voices, distorted by the sound of the wind.

‘Wait, don’t kill him!  Better to have them believe these three fools came to blows and shot each other,’ the hooded man ordained, with his voice disguised.

‘They’ll think the Slovene had a score to settle with the smugglers and they’ll not investigate,’ answered the accomplice, arriving at just the right time.

‘Let’s take him to Borgolauro and throw him to the sea from the first cliff we find’.

‘What if his flatfoot friends think it was an accident?’

‘What’s important is that they won’t tie him to us’.

‘But he was watching our movements’.

‘This bastard was here covertly and off his own back!’

‘How do you know this?’

‘If you don’t want to see to these three yourself, stop asking questions, Oblak!’

‘As you wish, but I’ll still take a second precaution, by your leave!’

After a further terrible blow to the head, all was darkness to Ziani.

After this long torpor, he felt himself being held by his thick locks, finding himself lying on his belly, neither on the wharf nor on a hospital bed, but on the icy waters of the Adriatic, his muscles as firm as marble.

Before he took leave of his senses again, he heard a soft voice whisper:

‘Don’t resist, carry yourself away and help yourself by beating your feet on the water.  Now you are safe’.

Milan, 22 October 1816 (one year later), 1 a.m.

Headquarters of the Directorate-General of the Austrian Police

‘Lieutenant, Sir, Lieutenant Ziani, wake up!’

‘Have you dragged me from the sea?  Where am I?’

‘Sea?  What?  I’m Corporal Dei Cas and we’re in a cell at headquarters’.

Ziani opened his eyes, wiped his drenched brow and turned to the newcomer.

‘I had a dream about that accursed night again; I’ll spare you the story of an old enquiry of mine that failed.  Is this something urgent, Corporal?’

‘In actual fact, there are two issues, Sir: first, quite aside from me admiring what you did last week by arresting that quartet and giving to the famished the bread they needed, I must put on the record …'

‘Dei Cas!’

‘Yes, lieutenant?’

‘That bread fell into the canal.  The ration distributed to the poor by the St Vincent volunteers is of unknown provenance, understood?’

‘I don’t wish to contradict you, but regulations dictates that an official of the Directorate General of the Austrian police not bear false witness and that the patrol officer assigned to make the declaration write irregularities as to what is …'

‘Dei Cas!’

‘Yes, sir,’ answered the corporal to attention.

‘Either you write as I’ve ordered you to or I second you to the revenue men on Livigno street!  What is the other problem?’

Afeared by the prospect of working in the cold in a place he well knew, the corporal responded on his feet:

‘They’ve found a body in the trombone of San Marco, sir; it appears to be a suicide’.

‘What the devil do you mean?  Where on Earth did they find it?’

‘As I’ve just said, sir, within the trombone of...’

The man dressed in sergeant’s uniform arrived just in time to correct the mistake.

‘Tombone of San Marco, Dei Cas.  Leave us be’.

With the corporal having left, Sangalli took a half-empty bottle from Ziani.

‘Commander in Chief Konrad has given me a written order.  He wants us to investigate the tombòn, but without apparel so as not to alarm’.

‘Konrad?  Does he … yes, in fact, does he know about that?’ he asked, pointing to the bottle.

‘All the Milan constabulary know, but at least he’s still the only one not to’.

‘It’s not often I do so, Paolo; just twice or thrice a month,’ Ziani admitted.

‘There is no drunkard worse than he who doesn’t think he is one.  Why do you ruin yourself so?’

‘To wish away my nightmares, but it has the opposite effect.  If only I had meaning to my waste of a life’.

‘I’ve just given you some.  Wash your face, shave, put on your overcoat and come with me!’

In a fog-ridden Milan, a jaunting car crossed the Corsia del Giardino, later to become via Manzoni.

On board was the Triestine lieutenant Marco Ziani, an officer in the Austrian army seconded to the police and former adjutant to Field Marshal Bellegarde, and sergeant Paolo Sangalli, born in Bovisa and former soldier of the Bonapartist Kingdom of Italy.

The former, clad in a grey overcoat, was tall with thick brown hair, his eyes and moustache of the same colour.

The latter, in a green overcoat, was stockier with a well-kept Van Dyke.

As the carriage turned in the fog onto Fratebenefratelli street, Sangalli turned to Ziani, engrossed in reading a written order.

‘What did that auld goat write, this Konrad?’

‘Simply that I’m to direct the enquiry about a man who’s thrown himself from the Medici bridge, also known as Suicide Bridge for it being frequented by those at the end of their rope.

‘The whole constabulary is busy on the lookout for seditious Bonapartists or secessionists and is under the control of the starving masses; we haven’t time for these odds and ends, in his opinion’.

‘The master ordains, the steed obeys!’ the good sergeant determined, speaking in dialect.

Ziani turned to look out of the carriage window, trying in vain to hear the voice or to make out the features of the person to have saved him some time ago from the freezing sea’s embrace.

Milan, 22 October 1816, 3 a.m.

Piazza San Marco

The carriage stopped close to piazza San Marco.  Both men moved on foot towards the tombone ─ big tomb ─ of San Marco, one of the three river bridges in Milan.  In their dialect, this is what the Milanese called the point in the Naviglio in which its waters, fed from different canals and waterways, formed perilous whirlwinds due to their difference in depth.  The fog, often like a leaden windowpane, led none to see past the end of their nose.  Ziani, of little practice in the area, asked:

‘Do you know where to find the suicide bridge?  As for me, that may be anywhere’.

‘I have an infallible method of finding the Naviglio without falling in’.

‘And that would be?’ asked Ziani, moving perchance towards its edge.

‘Follow the stench and you’ll get to the jakes.  It’s mathematical’.

‘It smells everywhere in this square, Mr Engineer.  Have I gone the right way?’

‘From there is the Conca delle Gabelle water basin and, if you take a few steps further forward, you’re bathing in the pond of San Marco.  Follow me to the other side of the tombone’.

‘Excuse me, where will the police be in this quarter?’

‘They’ll be at the bridge to a man, even if they’d have to send some officers to guard the exits.  They can’t have brought in reinforcements in such a rush’.

After some moments taken to get their bearings, Sangalli brought Ziani to the Medici bridge, where three young officers of the local police were busy precisely washing the bloodied cobbles.

Drawing near to one of them, Ziani asked:

‘What are you doing, young man?’

‘I’m sure not drinking a beer with the Emperor!  What do you think?’

‘This gentleman is Oberleutnant Ziani from the Directorate-General of Police!  More respect, boy!’ Sangalli exclaimed imperiously.

The poor young man’s face went white and he stood to attention.  He began to stammer.

‘At y... your s... service, sir!’

‘You’re obliterating the evidence from the scene of a crime.  Just what are they teaching you in the local constabulary?  And most important of all: where’s the body?’ asked Sangalli.

‘Second Lieutenant Spreafico from the local police has had him brought to the morgue’.

‘What are you called, lad?’ asked Ziani, looking him right in the eye.

‘Officer Biraghi, sir’.

‘Tell me, in few words, what occurred!’

‘The lock warden beckoned us, having found the man’s body right under the bridge pillar.  Luckily, with there being not much water of late, it surfaced quickly, at least I believe it did, and also …'

‘That should be all!  How come your superior from the constabulary is not present?’

‘Well, with the cadaver sent to the morgue and having ordered the blood to be washed, there was no reason for him to stay and...’

‘What did you say he was called?  Sparafico?’

‘Spreafico, sir, Second Lieutenant Egidio Spreafico’.

In dialect, Sangalli ventured: ‘Praise be he doesn’t understand aught!’

Ignoring this barb, Ziani turned to the young officer:

‘Very well, Biraghi, stay here with my sergeant whilst he examines the scene of the crime and collects evidence and accounts from witnesses, is that clear?’

‘Loud and clear, sir!’

‘Not for me, it isn’t, at all!’ Sangalli called out.  ‘Why must I do everything?  You’re the one to run this!’

‘As a matter of fact, I’m going forthwith to the morgue to examine the body.  Unless you’d like to...?’

The sergeant looked aghast, just at the thought of entering the mortuary.

‘I’d rather not, thank you; I prefer the cold, the fog and the sewer rats to the smell of a dead body and the stupid ideas your friend has of a joke!’

‘We’ll meet tomorrow at headquarters.  Where is the carriage from?’ Ziani concluded.

‘Are you taking the coach?  And where am I to find another at this time of night?’

‘Don’t you want me to go on foot to Cà Granda at this time of night?’

‘Well, really, I...’

‘A walk through the morning dew to headquarters will do the world of good to your body and spirit’.

‘Get catching ’em mice, then!’

Ziani laughed, if only for a second.

Since Dei Cas roused him in that cell, he felt at the mercy of disquiet that couldn’t leave him.  The many particularities of that night he’d been assaulted came back to haunt him with every time the dream was repeated, but there was still something missing, something vital that the mind failed to seize on, which gave him no peace, something to perhaps put a face or a name to someone who wished him dead and another who had saved his life.

CHAPTER III

Milan, 22 October 1816, 4.30 a.m.

Cà Granda Infirmary, Strada dell’Ospedale della Cerchia dei Navigli

Lieutenant Ziani’s direct coach to the Infirmary skirted the Cerchia dei Navigli, the medieval city walls of Milan’s ancient defensive moat that could be flooded as and when; the south-eastern parts of the city had been transformed by the genius of Leonardo da Vinci at Naviglio by linking the Naviglio Grande to the Martesana.  The turrets had been lit and the fog had raised enough for it to be seen that the canal still had no boats passing through.

As the carriage proceeded between swings and creaks that the uneven paving compelled, Ziani didn’t seem anxious to visit the mortuary chamber at the hospital.  In his heart of hearts, he hoped to reach there with the autopsy newly ended and to meet his friend Doctor Carlo Vercesi of Pavia, who’d pioneered neonatal forensic medicine.  Vercesi was second to none when it came to analysis of his findings on cadavers and the organs therein.

Having both emerged from the front and moved towards the rear entrance of this enormous hospital building, Ziani lingered on the long terracotta façade of the building, fascinated by the monumental central gate dividing the façade of the contrada dell’Ospedale, or the via Festa del Perdono, in twain and equally. In particular, he observed the eastern wing of this edifice, the building of which was instigated by Filarete to whom was owed the round-arched arcade resting on columns of stone, their foundations raised high.

After a few breaths drawn in force, Ziani decided to enter the building.  He walked along the gargantuan courtyard alone, surrounded by arcades up to the guard post.  He was then accompanied to the mortuary by the officer on duty through a series of large rooms bearing wooden beams; between these rooms he would often lose his way.

Milan, 22 October 1816, 5 a.m.

Piazza San Marco

Sangalli was unable to find any clues whatsoever in the area that had been so well cleaned.  Testily, he threw a cigar to the ground he had been nervously smoking and turned to Biraghi:

‘So, lad, can you tell me where the blood was?’

‘I don’t follow the question, sir; it was here on the bridge, of course’.

‘Try not to give me stupid answers and we’ll do well.  You've cleaned the bridge with so much of that water, there’s no longer any more here than in the rest of this godforsaken lake.  There was blood only on the spot you were at when we arrived?’

‘Ah, now I understand; do forgive me, sir.  This was the biggest patch of it and the rest was dripping as far to the spot at which you and the lieutenant arrived’.

‘Do the boats tend to be moored on the same side from which we reached you?’

‘Yes, sir!’

‘Were there any colleagues of yours about at the time of death?’

‘In this fog?  You have to be joking, right, sir?’

‘Not a bit!  Who discovered the body?’

‘The guard at the lock who took ill on seeing it.  Now it falls to us at the station at Andegari to report to sergeant Gobetti.  He should be back then’.

‘On his return, let me know because I want to interrogate him also.  If memory serves me right, there’s a tavern open through the night on the bank opposite; you’ll find me there.  Should I move about, I’ll come to tell you of it.  When you’ve finished cleaning, stay here and wait’.

‘Very well, sir, but ─ if I may ─ what will you be doing in that trough?’

‘Interrogating the landlord and his patronage.  What did you think, you fool?’

Milan, 22 October 1816, 5 a.m.

General Hospital

A few years earlier, the General Hospital of Milan had introduced many an innovation regarding its organisation that had always been efficient and innovative.  During the recent Napoleonic era, its superintendent Pietro Moscati had established a well-accoutred chemical laboratory, rearranged formulas, advocated that medicines be distributed gratis to the poor and developed an educational institution to instruct young doctors in waiting, the absence of a Faculty of Medicine within the city notwithstanding.  No less important was his creation of a small department of forensic medicine, a new discipline making its first steps through all Europe, particularly in Vienna with an actual school of its own to support the police in their criminal investigations.

Barely concealing his unease, Ziani turned to an orderly wishing to clean the long corridor floor leading to the mortuary.

‘Police!  Is the Catalan here?’

‘He’s in the mortuary chamber at the end of the corridor, sir’.

‘I was hoping he’d not yet left … Thank you!’ he answered, proceeding with measured steps and the grimace of disgust seen in those preparing for the worst.

Catalan was the vernacular for what would now be called a forensic scientist whose remit was, above all, health: he was a fully-fledged doctor who registered the cause of death for all the dead, not just those whose death was suspect as an English coroner did and does.  The vital difference between Italian and English forensic medicine is that the coroner is only a civil servant who refers cases of unnatural death to the public authorities.  In contrast, this Catalan ─ first cited in official papers from the middle of the fifteenth century ─ was a fully-qualified doctor called upon to ascertain causes of death.  The origin of the name may very well have been the robe he’d wear for prophylactic purposes as opposed to a shirt: an exceptionally long garment, almost like an enormous tunic meant to protect him from any which scourge.

As Ziani lingered over the final steps, a slight, fair-haired young doctor with haunted eyes took him by the hand over the mortuary threshold.

‘You were just the thing I needed to round off such a wonderful night.  What can I do you for?  Another remedy for those bottle aches of yours?  Just when will you ever cease to ruin yourself by your own hand?’

‘Hullo, Vercesi; I am pleased to see you too.  I sensed a little nostalgia on your part and of this place, obviously.  I’m here about the man from the tombone of San Marco’.

‘You’ve come late; he isn’t very presentable and, having remembered the last time you saw an autopsy, I counsel you against coming through this door’.

‘Well, you’ve now finished, praise be.  Tell me all because I have blind faith in your account without having to see the cadaver.  I cannot abide autopsies’.

‘Well, you know what they say in the barracks: If you don’t know how to stay in the game...’

‘...you didn't have to join in.  I know it well!  Now, what can you tell me about the suicide?’

‘When alive, he must have been such a unique chap, full of invention; I would venture his was a creative spirit,’ commented the doctor.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘By that, I mean that I’ve never seen anyone attempt suicide by two knives to the back, then extracting the blade,’ answered Vercesi.  ‘Disappointed in the failure of his attempt, he then threw himself from a bridge to be battered against the foot of a pillar on that bridge’.

He led the guest into a near-darkened room full of test tubes, with chemical solutions deposited on a bench, seemingly in disorder and defying reason.

Ziani sat down on a wooden stool, with the doctor removing his coat and then presenting him with a large chest of objects of various kinds.

‘The personal effects of the victim’.

‘What can you tell me of his death?’

‘I could have told you more of what I’ve deduced, had I examined him at the scene of the crime!’ Vercesi commented as he drank a glass of milk.

‘The Directorate-General of Police are working to recognise your province, as it were, officially.  Believe!’

‘Let us wait now for Vienna!  Well, to get back to this creative suicide: as you were saying, he twice stabbed himself in the back ─ not the once ─ and then, unhappy as to the outcome, he takes the dagger out and leaps into the tombone of San Marco to be pummelled against the foot of a bridge pillar’.

‘Which means whoever killed him has tried awkwardly to make it look like suicide’.

‘Not that awkwardly; do you know how many cases like this have taken place in Pavia?’

‘No, how many?’

‘At least ten since I left university!  The cases were closed due to their being entrusted to incompetent functionaries and malingerers or … drunkards’.

‘Just like me, then!’ Ziani cried, suddenly reawakening from the torpor.

‘I didn’t mean to offend you, Marco, but everyone in the constabulary knows you drink and for that, if they’ve given you this case, they want you to chalk it up to suicide’.

‘Good-for-nothing bastards!’ whispered Ziani as he stared at the white wall of the study.

‘Now, what do I do?  Do I record it as a suicide and omit the dagger wounds?’

‘Perish the thought, Doctor!  Write the truth; the rest will be my affair.  Let’s look at his chattels,’ Ziani said, availing himself of a sudden zeal.

Vercesi’s words motivated him to find a purpose to the man’s life.

‘Our decedent hid them well in different pockets within his jacket and overcoat.  I feel sure that neither his assassin nor your colleague in the constabulary, that scoundrel of a second lieutenant, Mangiafico…'

‘Spreafico.  I see it wasn’t only me to have his name wrong!’

‘In essence, the victim was never searched by your constabulary friends’.

Ziani noticed the platter, first noting a small, very incisive dagger:

‘It’s clean; he didn’t defend himself.  He can’t have been deaf to the steps of the assailant on that bridge, therefore …'

‘He knew that man and gently turned his back to him.  Perchance both had arrived at the tombone together and had arranged a rendez-vous’.

‘And above all, who knows for why?  Let us move forward,’ Ziani said, cutting to the chase.

‘His identity document is still legible in parts,’ Vercesi observed.

‘See, the Christian name can’t be read any more, but the surname is Marais, born in an illegible French locale’.

‘If he’s a foreigner, you could examine the hotel records of Milan’.

‘There’s no need; look here, there’s an illegible address in the identity document holder’.

‘Excellent, you bloodhound!  That quite escaped my notice!  What’s written there?’

‘Hotel Belle Venise, piazza San Fedele, Milano’.

‘So, the friend was well kept.  As to the rest, even his clothes were of superb quality: from jacket and shirt to trousers and shoes, all were made to measure and bearing the label of a Parisian haberdasher.  Even the unmentionables are made from fine cotton and the cap is of the English sort, like their nobility use on their hunts for foxes on the heath.  The shoes, nonetheless, were cobbled here in Milan’.

‘There’s also a pocket watch here, a wallet full of French and Austrian currency with some coins’.

‘I dare say you can safely rule out theft as a possible motive!’

‘No doubt.  Tomorrow morning, I shall send an officer to retrieve everything.  You then let me know when you’ll be able to appear before the Magistrate for testimony at the inquest’.

‘In fact, my deposition is set for tomorrow morning, rather ... today at noon,’ answered Vercesi, his face reddening.

‘What was that?  That’s impossible, are you sure you’ve understood?’

‘On governor Saurau’s orders.  The magistrate will be Count Giuseppe Sormani.  Best of all, the order came in writing before the cadaver even arrived.  What am I to do?’

‘Tell them everything you’ve just uncovered’.

‘Now, I’ll go back to examining the wounds.  If only I could uncover the type of blade as used and determine whether the assassin used his right hand or if he’s left-handed'.

‘Can you spare me ten minutes before you go to your cemetery?’

‘Have you already had that nightmare?’

‘It would be news to tell you I’ve no longer had it’.

‘Is this why you’ve turned back to the drink of late?’

‘Not for that alone.  The spirits of my poor friends fallen at the Battle of Wagram have come back to haunt me’.

‘By Christ, it’s the same old story!  Why do this, Marco?  Everyone likes the odd glass, but to give a bottle to you is like...’

‘All right, Carlo, you’ve said your piece!  Now do you want to hark what I say?’

‘You have my word, even if I find it absurd to confide in someone whose only business is with the dead’.

‘Well, at least I know that you’ll not tell my secrets to many’.

‘And it’s me who also listens to your inanities!  Is the dream always the same?’

‘Only slightly different.  For the first time, I heard voices’.

‘Which voices?  The usual elusive maiden ─ or maybe it was a boy ─ who, adept at swimming, thrust you from the icy grasp of the Adriatic Sea, pulling you ashore by the hair until you fell unconscious again?’

‘Damn your eyes, Carlo!  I was dying and the tide carried me out to sea that night.  How did I return to the shore?’

‘Like you don’t know!  We’ve discussed this so many times before: when you’d woken up in a hospital bed in Trieste, you learnt that an unknown individual found you on the beach and summoned the police, not a woman’.

‘But must that be true?  I was certainly saved, but by whom?’

‘Is that all?  You’ve certainly not told me anything new’.

‘I’d have done so, had you not interrupted me.  I heard the voice of those two cads to have left me for dead’.

‘You’re trying to bring to the surface that which is still lacking.  What were they saying?’

‘One of the two ─ I believe him to be the man with the hood ─ had a false voice and seemed to know all about me, but I understood precious little of what he said until he called the man to have struck me in the back by the name of Oblak,’ answered Ziani, with a chill taking hold there, as frozen as the hold of the Bora on his body adrift in the Adriatic.

CHAPTER IV

Milan, 22 October 1816, 7 a.m.

Headquarters of the Directorate-General of the Austrian Police

Sangalli made himself known at Ziani’s office with a yawn and a written report concerning the clues left.

The lieutenant invited him to sit down on a stool of worm-addled wood that, with a table and a dusty filing cabinet, comprised all the furnishings in the room.

‘A spot of coffee?’ Ziani offered.  ‘The Molinari girl made it, not Dei Cas’.

‘Praise be!’ answered the second lieutenant in a sigh of relief.

‘Can you summarise your novel by mouth whilst taking out the irrelevant details?’

‘Very simply: none in the vicinity of the tombone saw or heard anything’.

‘Who did you question?’

‘The lock’s night watchman and the proprietor of the only tavern open at that time of night ─ situated at the side of the bridge opposite the church ─, a certain Cirillo, a Neapolitan immigrant who’s run the place for a dozen years or so.  Neither he nor his five patrons have seen or heard a thing.  Nearly all were drunk’.

‘As perfect citizens of the Austrian Empire should!  Have you provided for their being identified?’

‘Certainly.  Molinari is looking into each of them in our records.  Given their grit, I wager they are all unreliable’.

‘You’ve lost the bet, Sergeant!’ a womanly voice called out over Sangalli’s shoulder.

‘May I enter, Lieutenant?’.

‘Come in, Molinari,’ answered Ziani, then offering her his seat.

Anna Molinari was the young daughter of the architect behind one of the best gilt bronze centrepieces in Milan that was exhibited before the Viennese court of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.  Upon Napoleon’s arrival with the French, he was disfavoured due to his sympathies with Austria and died impoverished.  The first governor of Milan, Bellegarde, had nonetheless helped the young Anna by procuring for her a post in the archive of the Directorate-General of Police.  Her impeccable knowledge of French and German, as well as Italian, afforded her access to the enormous amount of information accumulated over the preceding half-century (including the two decades of Napoleonic occupation) in all three languages.

She was a fair-haired, short-sighted and buxom girl of medium height and wide flanks; she would try to hide her chest with a frock coat twice too large.  She wore a pair of thick spectacles and her hair tied in a plait hanging down.

‘I wager that the suspects are more candid than the doves!’ said Ziani.

‘Your unreliables, Paolo, are a milkman, a lantern lighter, a knife grinder, a painter, a baker and a shoemaker,’ Molinari clarified.

‘And what of that landlord from Naples, this Cirillo character?’ the sergeant asked in disappointment.

‘He came to Milan when Murat was King of Naples.  His hostelry has neither been patronised by miscreants nor has it been a place for brawling or illicitness’.

‘So now we’re in the shit!’ Sangalli cried out, with Ziani looking askance at him due to the presence of the lady functionary to whom he then gave the victim’s credentials.

‘The surname was Marais, but his first name is illegible.  Can you investigate this?’

‘As once I find something, I’ll be back with you, sir’.

‘Not before late this afternoon; the sergeant and I must go …'

‘Do you mind?!  No, just a moment, what’s that mean?  I must make clear to you that I’ve not had a wink of sleep all night and I’ve not even broken fast yet!’ Sangalli protested.

‘I was just saying that the sergeant and I must go to Piazza San Fedele into the hotel of the victim, then to the constabulary and onto Cà Granda’.

‘You know where to find me,’ answered Molinari with a military salute.

‘May I apprise you of the fact I’ve not slept for more than twenty-four hours?  I’ve not the word slave marked on the forehead!’

‘There is still coffee in the pot, feel free to avail yourself of it!’ Ziani answered.

‘Very well, let’s not sleep!  As to everything else:’ he said, continuing in dialect, ‘neither at the hostelry nor in bed do you grow old!’

Milan, 22 October 1816, 8.30 a.m.

Hotel Bella Venezia, Piazza San Fedele

Ziani and Sangalli swept alongside the Teatro alla Scala to turn right for contrada Del Marino (which would later become via Marino), thereby reaching in a few minutes the nearby piazza San Fedele, its name taken from the sixteenth century church appearing before it.

To the right of the church could the rear parts of the Palazzo Marino be admired, the building occupied by numerous bureaux of the Habsburg financial administration.

On the south-west wing of the square, Ziani noted the remnants of a building being felled.

‘And what was this?’ he asked the sergeant.

‘The Palazzo Sannazzari.  Upon the demise of the proprietor over ten years ago, it was taken over by Napoleon who installed the Ministry of Finance there for his Kingdom of Italy’.

‘Do you mean that poor whippersnapper Giuseppe Prina?’

‘The very man!  Back then, he wasn’t so dishonest.  In 1814 and not long before Bellegarde came, the baying crowds assaulted the palace and slaughtered the poor mite, causing such damage and devastation.  Now it’s to be demolished and replaced with a new palace commissioned by a certain Count Carlo Imbonati’.

Ziani set his sights on the portal of a newer building bearing just the one balcony on the second floor.  It was bedecked with various framed flowers, much the same as the seven windows of both second and third floors at the front.

The sergeant at his side, he approached the concierge to question its workers and, finally, the hotel superintendent.  He was a tall, greying man with an affable demeanour, wearing a moustache and spectacles.

‘In our guest book, everything is written down, Lieutenant.  Here we are: Monsieur Octave Marais, born at Grenoble in 1780, arrived this last tenth of October, payment anticipated for and until the day after tomorrow,’ said the superintendent as he showed them the entry.

‘When did you last see him?’

‘I don’t recall having seen him often, but you may speak to the gents and...’

‘Today’s your lucky day, Paolo, good questioning!  If it doesn’t displease you, sir, whilst my zealous sergeant questions the hotel’s employees, I’d like to inspect Monsieur Marais’ room’.

‘I’ll have the keys given to you forthwith and I remain fully at your disposal’.

Whilst the sergeant was taking statements from secretaries, waiters, porters and some guests on the first floor, Ziani opened the window of Marais’ room looking out to the rear of the Palazzo Marino and began the inspection.

Having worked for two hours, he was concluding the examination of the victim’s last jacket when he heard a knock at the door.

‘Yes?  Oh, it’s you, Paolo!  Have you finished?’

‘Depressingly so!  Our suicidal contortionist was a skinflint of few words and didn’t call in on either any of the patrons nor the usual ladies of the night.  He was never seen on the first floor of a morning: he’d take coffee and would then leave to return under cover of darkness, almost until dawn, in fact!’

‘Every day?’

‘Except for yesterday, given he still stayed in his room and left before dinner, never to return.  Have you found something?’

‘He was a cleanly chap, orderly and meticulous.  Aside from the replacement of linen planned until the last day of his visit, I found receipts and orders that indicated what line of work he had’.

‘A merchant, you mean?’

‘A merchant for a large company of Dijon vintners, an inventory for which I’ve found, although I was hoping to find something of more interest, like the name of the one he was to meet at the Tombone last night!’

‘But why meet at that late hour, given the regularity of his movements?’

‘We’re to speak of this later; now, time is short and we have to be in two other places before noon’.

‘So be it.  I’ll replace this jacket into the wardrobe and...’

‘Put it back on the bed, Paolo.  I’ve yet to search it and I’ve heard something knocking within,’ Ziani said, jumping to his feet as if a spring.

As the confound sergeant shook the garment, Ziani clearly heard a similar noise to that produced by a small sack of dice or marbles.

‘Where does that come from?’ asked Sangalli.

Ziani uncovered an inner pocket so well sewn as to become almost imperceptible to whomever should handle it without undressing.  Extending his hand to the sergeant, he asked:

‘Your knife, Paolo’.

With surgical exactitude, Ziani cut into the seam and extracted a sort of closed vial with paper rolled around it and strange dark orbs therein.

Astonished, Sangalli asked:

‘What are they?  Lamb droppings, from a particularly small one, at that?’

Ziani silenced him with wide open eyes and relived the nightmare of that accursed night.

‘Marco, just what has happened to you?’

‘You take these things; they’re evidence.  I’ll explain everything later’.

‘Just a moment, have you seen the paper that covered the vial?  There’s something written on it, perhaps a name’.

‘Let me see … the name is Irina and the surname is incomprehensible; it seems like it’s Verga or Varga.  There’s P18 beside it; who knows what that means?  I’ll keep this whilst you convey the list of employees and clientèle to Molinari’.

‘Regarding the guests, I’ve questioned them all apart from three who’d left before our arrival.  I’ve left the concierge with a summons to report to the Directorate-General for deposition’.

‘Very good.  You now go to Molinari whilst I summon another service carriage’.

At last alone, Ziani sighed deeply to ward off the ill feeling provoked by his recognition of the marbles as opium; the illicit circulation of this drug had caused the collapse of his investigation in Trieste.

After that dreadful night, the opium trade that had consumed Trieste literally vanished into thin air.  Ziani always asked himself why the smugglers had abandoned the well-to-do Triestine market, considering that he – after two months in the infirmary – had been transferred to Milan, having been beckoned there by Field Marshal Bellegarde who sought a trustworthy man to assign to the city’s criminal bureau.

Who was furnishing the organisation with opium?

Whence did it hail?

Who was the mysterious hooded one at the port to know everything about his cover?

Who had pulled him by the hair to save him from drowning?

This bombardment of unanswered questions was interrupted by the arrival of the service carriage, ready to take him to a new phase of his investigation.

CHAPTER V

Milan, 22 October 1816, 11.30 a.m.

Andegari Barracks

During the brief journey from Piazza Scala to the nearby contrada Andegari, which is now via Andegari, Ziani ran through Sangalli’s report about the testimony of the Hotel Bella Venezia’s clientèle.

The carriage having stopped before the Andegari barracks, headquarters of the local constabulary, a gloomy and decrepit building of darkened brick, Ziani presented himself in a sure step to an office to the right of the entrance.  Sangalli lingered in the atrium with the young officer Biraghi on guard duty.

‘Is Second Lieutenant Spreafico at quarters?’ asked the sergeant.

‘At your service!’ answered a haughty voice over his shoulder.  Sangalli turned towards two men with poorly kept beards and shabby, oily uniforms in green of the local constabulary.

Spreafico, a stout man of forty or so with greying black hair and sideburns, pointed to his companion who was his equal in build, but with red hair.

‘This is Sergeant Gobetti, but you – if I’m not mistaken – are Sergeant Sangalli, former non-commissioned officer in the Napoleonic army’.

‘From the Directorate-General of Police, sir!’ Sangalli clarified.

‘Very well, very well!  Here we have a truly intrepid criminal investigator to tell us how to do our jobs, eh, Gobetti?’ Spreafico hissed teasingly, causing his adjutant and passing officers to laugh.

Sangalli deigned not to answer, but could be seen to clench his fists.

Suddenly with a serious air, Spreafico obstructed his path, muttered through clenched teeth:

‘Here, sergeants tend to bring us coffee!’

‘And what, pray, do second lieutenants do?’ asked a manly voice over his shoulder with irony.  Recognising who had just entered, Spreafico turned as white as a sheet, but Ziani ignored him as if he were a spirit and turned to Sangalli to say:

‘Have the internal investigation squadron visit, Paolo.  These barracks disgust more than a battlefield latrine and normal means of airing are unobserved, to say nothing of hygiene!  This is a coven for rats needing serious and precise work’.

Still ignoring Spreafico, Ziani turned to the red-haired adjutant:

‘Sergeant …. Gobetti?  One B, not two, is that right?’

‘To the letter!’ the latter replied to attention.

‘Sangalli will have a coffee with two sugar lumps, me with none!’

‘I’ll see to it forthwith,’ answered Gobetti, his face reddening with head bowed.

Ziani seemed to notice Spreafico at last, intent on concealing his ire with great effort.

‘Now, Egidio, how are things?  Have you managed to obtain from those girls of yours a higher percentage or have you had to seek new means?’

‘To what do I owe the pleasure of your unexpected visit?’ hissed his colleague in a low voice, but brimming with rage.

‘The Marais case’.

‘The … what?’

‘Octave Marais, dead last night at the Tombone di San Marco and considered a suicide with two dagger wounds to the back.  Were you not told?’

‘I … I didn’t think …'

‘I’ve come to this paradise on Earth to hear your preliminary report as to the findings.  As of now, it’s only me to deal with this!’

‘I’ve only just completed it, but you can’t just enter this place and...’

‘Ah!  The coffee!  Thank you, Gobetti.  Regarding this latrine of a barracks, Egidio, you have three days to put it in order.  For the time being, we’ll not report this and, if you’ve been up to par, you’ll not have an inspection from Konrad’.

‘Does that mean I should thank you?’ stammered Spreafico.

‘Not at all.  I’m the affable sort; I take no offence.  Good day, gentlemen!’

Milan, 22 October 1816, 12.15 p.m.

Ospedale Maggiore (General Infirmary)

After fifteen minutes or so of delay to the schedule, both officers were able to reach the crowded hospital hall in which Doctor Vercesi would expound the results of the autopsy to the realm’s magistrate, Count Sormani.

‘I can affirm with full certainty that, on the basis of the direction taken by the two dagger blows and the depth of the wound, the assassin used his left hand’.

‘The left!’ whispered Ziani.  ‘He was meant to have found that out when I’d left the crypt.  Let us furnish him with the written account’.

‘And I’m to give him the vial with the little blood that has been collected from the bridge!’ answered Sangalli.

As Vercesi proceeded with his oral report, Ziani noticed a short man aged thirty or so with thinning hair and a bowler hat, intent on the frenetic taking of notes.

‘That man I must have seen before, but I know not where or when, Paolo’.

‘He’s a chronicler for the Gazetta di Milano named Beniamino Bassi’.

‘Low by name and by nature, from where I’m standing!  But where have I seen him?’

‘He’s the scribe who requested from you an account of last month’s tumult’.

‘How did I answer?’

‘You had him fulfil … an important bodily necessity!’

‘Buy the latest edition of the Gazette’.

‘Why not you?  It’s always me to pay!’

‘Have it repaid at quarters as an expense of the judicial authorities’.

‘Capital idea!  They’ll do it with fingers through the eyes,’ Sangalli said, adding a Lombard turn of phrase: ‘He who works is not paid for what he does!’

‘Quiet now, the magistrate is about to question our friend, the Catalan’.

‘Doctor Vercesi, were the blows dealt methodically or under the grip of fury or of drunkenness?’ asked Count Sormani.

‘The assassin knew well how to wound.  Both of them were fatal!’

‘Therefore, a man hired to kill or a former soldier!’ whispered Sangalli as the magistrate tried to quieten the murmurs of the curious crowd within the hall.

At the close of Vercesi’s testimony, Ziani approached the magistrate.

‘Your Excellency, I am the police officer responsible for the evidence and would like to request from you an adjournment’.

‘Do you possess further evidence?’

‘I’ve not had but a few hours to procure it, sir’.

‘I am myself surprised by the speed at which this tribunal has been arranged, Lieutenant.  Permission is granted!’

‘Thank you, sir!’ answered Ziani, saluting him militarily before parting.

Having assembled the records for the governor, the magistrate turned to the assembled:

‘This inquest is adjourned sine die, pending the inquiries of the police to allow them to procure further evidence’.

As the crowd left the hospital, Vercesi turned to Ziani.

‘There you have it, but now you’ve dragged me into a sea of problems!’

At that very moment, in fact, Spreafico and Gobetti came out of the room muttering.

‘He’s asked for an adjournment,’ asked Gobetti.  ‘What the devil is he thinking of?’

‘Something to ruin him.  Send me a carriage!’ answered Spreafico.

‘Where do you wish to go, sir?’

'To his superior!'

Milan, 22 October 1816, 5 p.m.

Palazzo Diotti in Borgo Monforte, seat of the Austrian State

Built between 1780 and 1785 from the ruins of a church on borgo Monforte beyond the Naviglio of San Damiano, the Palazzo Diotti was turned from a private residence into the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior for the Bonapartist Kingdom of Italy in 1803, then becoming the seat of the Austrian government in 1814.

The imposing primary façade of the building comprised of two lateral avant-corps and a rearward central body, the site of a portal with four Doric columns to support the balcony, with the remainder of the ground floor decorated in smooth ashlar.

Within the building and a room embellished with crystal chandeliers and paintings by Andrea Appiani, two functionaries were in a discussion.

The younger of the two wore the old white uniform with red breeches of an Austrian army officer.

The older wore a white linen shirt, a blue jacket with a cravat and waistcoat of the same hue.

‘The magistrate has consented to an indefinite adjournment of the inquest on Ziani’s request,’ Konrad, head of police, explained to Governor Saurau.

He conveyed the official report of the forensic scientist from Cà Granda and that of the local constabulary.

‘How attentive is that second lieutenant … Sperafico?’ asked Saurau, having avidly read both documents.  Konrad answered with brows furrowed:

‘Spreafico, you mean, Excellency?  You don’t wish to withdraw Ziani from this case, I hope!’

‘Should he be intent on making a Shakespearean tragedy of this, Out, damned spot! it is and the sooner the better!’

‘May I express my opinion, Governor, sir?’

‘Do speak freely, Chief Commissioner!’

‘Ziani has become very popular amongst the Milanese for having vanquished the black market in bread.  Were we to withdraw him from the case, the people would ask why and the local and foreign press would drive themselves mad with talk of conspiracies’.

‘Which is what they’re already doing, Herr Konrad!’ answered Saurau, beating down an evening edition of the Gazzetta di Milano.

All colour left the Commissioner’s face on reading the title:

Have the police lost control?  What is the meaning of this?

‘We’re betwixt hammer and anvil!  Read the first lines for me to hear!’

‘In just one week, Milan is besieged by chaos: assaults on the city bakeries, long lines of protesters singing to the return of the French and of the Kingdom of Italy, thefts and robberies hitherto unseen during twenty years of Napoleonic rule and, last but not least, a terrible murder mistaken for suicide by the short-sighted constabulary.  Can we be sure, however, that this is incompetence alone?  In the coming days, we will be looking deeper into...’

‘Enough, enough!  Do you understand why I want to close this case as a matter of promptness?’

‘Of course, but all the more reason for us to leave the inquiry to Ziani.  If not, the author of this article, Bassi, will have more fodder for the elaboration of these conspiracy theories and to expound them no end, your Excellency’.

‘I’ll bear that intriguing scrivener in mind; don’t let’s forget the Gazette is the newspaper of Empire’.

‘Will you seek his dismissal?’

‘I’ll determine the best solution when I’ve spoken with my friend Vicenzo Butti, one of the